Tom Pursglove: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to speak in this important debate and to assume my new ministerial responsibilities that so directly relate to bettering people’s lives across our country. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) for raising this important issue and for introducing the Bill.
For context, as a former Victims Minister and a former Policing Minister with responsibility for domestic abuse and VAWG, I believe that the Bill is a welcome step forward that will help victims of horrendous domestic abuse. I am pleased to confirm, in that spirit, that the Government intend to support this Bill.
The Child Maintenance Service provides an important service helping separated parents who are unable to make a family-based arrangement to support their children. Child maintenance payments provide vital support to single-parent families, and the CMS provides support to many of the poorest single-parent families. We know that, on average, approximately 140,000 fewer children are growing up in poverty as a result of child maintenance payments. This includes payments through both family-based arrangements and arrangements made through the CMS. As my hon. Friend said, the CMS has collected and arranged more than £1 billion-worth of child maintenance payments each year since 2019.
I will now say a few things about how domestic abuse victims are dealt with in the service. The CMS is committed to ensuring that all parents, no matter what their circumstances, feel safe when applying for and using the service. We have already considered the issue of domestic abuse and how it is best handled in the CMS, and we have learned from cases where domestic abuse has been a factor. To answer the shadow Minister’s point, training in this area has been considerably improved in recent times to ensure greater awareness.